Conventional microscopes have a Köhler illumination. Up to now, mostly high pressure lamps having an electric arc and halogen lamps having spirally-wound filaments have been used. In both systems, size and configuration of the actual light source are pregiven in a narrow context. An adaptation of the light source to the dimensioning of the illuminating beam path takes place via an adaptation optic, the so-called collector.
The imaging beam path is optimized for viewing into the ocular. For this reason, when using cameras, a beam path adaptation to the field size must take place at the location of the image (chip surface of the camera) via an additional adapter.
Furthermore, the manual intervention into the microscope must be ensured and, for this purpose, the beam paths are so dimensioned that all optical components such as objectives, filters, diaphragms, et cetera can also be serviced manually. For a pregiven field size, magnification and aperture of the optic, the dimensions of the illumination and imaging optic thereby result for the systems existing up to now.
It is otherwise in automated microscopes wherein exclusively an image-providing sensor is to be optimally illuminated. The image-providing sensor is defined with respect to its dimensions by the chip diagonal. In addition, an adaptation of the optical components must take place to the specimen geometry or specimen carrier geometry and an adaptation of the resolution of the optic must take place to the resolution of the image-providing sensor with this resolution being limited by the number of pixels.
Overall, in these peripheral conditions, the requirement is for a cost-effective compact configuration with a miniaturization as an essential aspect.